PROPAGANDA BY SHORT WAVE

editedBy H. L. Childs '19 and J. B. Whitton.Princeton University Press, 1942. Pp. xii †355. $3.75.

THIS COLLECTION OF eight articles was written by staff members of the Princeton Listening Center, established by the School of Public and International Affairs and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. Without this invaluable work in understanding foreign (allied and enemy) broadcast propaganda from November 1939 to July 1941 the subsequent work of the Federal Communications Commission would have been a mad scramble beginning just a few months before war actually arrived.

Essays include an historical survey of radio in international politics from the days of Wilson's Fourteen Points, a typing of foreign radio propaganda, the American short-wave audience, and a valuable study of trends and patterns of radio propaganda during 1939-1941. The early clumsiness of English and French broadcasts, the naivety of the Italians, and the mastery of detail of the Germans are all in sharp contrast. And the United States was far behind them all, despite our supreme development of radio engineering and commercial advertising. It is important to note Professor Childs' estimate that whereas about one-third of our radio sets are equipped for short-wave reception, the audience is probable under 1% of the population. Our broadcasts to Europe have a much larger audience, despite enemy censorship and terrorism.

Dartmouth's alumni and ex-faculty mem- bers on this study included Prof. Childs (who outlined and supervised the plan of research) and Prof. Hadley Cantril '28both formerly at Dartmouth and now at Princeton.